228: 5 Ways Your Lack of Confidence Is Hurting You

You have a lot of knowledge and expertise, but if you continually doubt the strength of your opinions or the importance of sharing your ideas, you're going to lose the ability to shape where your career is going. Hello, everyone. This is Kathy Caprino, and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created this show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life, to rise up, speak up, and stand up for who that are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week, I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts, and the entrepreneurial world. And they'll be sharing their intimate stories of Finding Brave and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful and meaningful life, business and career. Hello, everybody. Kathy here, and welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. I'm so excited to be with you today and I want to share something here. You've heard me say this quite a lot, that I absolutely love doing this show, particularly because it allows me to speak with brilliant minds every single week that teach me what I'm interested in learning so that I can grow as a person, so that listeners can grow, so my clients and course members and team members can grow. But every once in a while, there's a topic that I feel very compelled to speak about, and this is one of them. Today we're talking about five ways your confidence is hindering your success and growth and also how it's obvious to others. And I want to talk about that not as a doom and gloom thing, but as something I really believe you can tackle and change right this minute. And I want to point out why I think it's so essential that we do. And I also want to share it because I've interviewed a lot of people about this topic, from best selling authors to therapists, you know, just a wide range of brilliant minds. And I just, I think that what I want to share comes from my particular lens, which is different from other people's. So let me share that. I think most of you know this, but if you don't, I had 18 years in a corporate career that was very successful on the outside, but not successful on the inside pretty much from day one. But it really got extremely bumpy when I approached 40. And after age 40, those bumps really turned into full blown crises and I did not know what hit me and I didn't know how to change it. I didn't know how to help myself. So it comes from that lens. Then it comes from the lens of after that and being laid off after 9, 11 saying, okay, enough, enough with this. I got to figure this out. I've got to heal, and I want to help people heal as well. So, as you know, I became a marriage and family therapist, which, interestingly, and it's, it's so useful now, but I didn't realize how useful it would be. That genre of therapy is based on systemic thinking. It's systems. So we're not necessarily, we're not at all looking at only the individual who has struggles and challenges and symptoms. We're looking at the system and how the system sustains, exacerbates and perpetuates the challenges and problems that the individual has. It's also based on communication theory and power and power dynamics. It's incredible. So it's so very useful in terms of looking at life today, our work, the systems in which we are embedded, our family, our organizations, our communities. So that's lens number two. Lens number three is being focused for 16 years, as I have, on professional women's challenges and what those look like that are different from what men face. I've done, as you know, so much research and doing all the writing that I do from Forbes to my own blogs and on LinkedIn, really does come from a research mindset. It's not just me making this stuff up. Right. And fourthly, it comes from the perspective of being a business owner and working in the realm of business, which, you know, some people who are not to put, not to cast aspersion on anybody, but some people who are psychiatrists or psychologists who talk about confidence and they're dealing with professionals, have never worked in a corporate environment or a business environment. And I really feel like when you have come from that experience, you see and feel and process things in a very different way because you've lived the identity of what it is to be in the business world. So that's where I'm coming. In terms of five ways, our lack of confidence is really apparent to others, and it impedes our ability to achieve what we want. So I've written a post and you're going to see this in a lot of places, but the first place I published was in my Forbes blog, and we're going to link to it below so you can read that. But I just wanted to talk through it briefly and also add one thing in each of these five ways in my writing. I've given a tip for you about how to assess that challenge. But now I want to give also an action strategy that you literally can take starting tomorrow. You don't need anything more than a commitment to taking this action. So there we go. Here are the five ways that your lack of confidence is most likely apparent to those around you. And it's hurting you. It's keeping you from growth, it's keeping you from what you want, right? So the first is you question your own ideas, thoughts and opinions and you hesitate to share them openly. So we can guess how damaging this can be. But let me just hit home, all of you listening. Have opinions, have views, have ideas, and they've come from hard earned work. Most of you are not just making this stuff up. You've been working a long time and you've vetted your ideas and you've seen things work and seen things not work. You have a lot of knowledge and expertise, but if you continually doubt the strength of your opinions or the importance of sharing your ideas, you're going to lose the ability to shape where your career is going. And you're going to lose the ability to choose roles and directions that feel right because you really don't feel you have a foundation of strength when it comes to your ideas, opinions and views. So the tip I want you to think about is ask yourself now, you know, I'd really love you to have a pad and paper in front of you once this is done. I'm going to make it as brief as possible so you can get to work on this. That you take notes, that you journal about this, that you really take some time to think about it. So the first tip is ask yourself, do I hold back in meetings and gatherings from expressing my ideas? I mean, who hasn't? I remember early on I'd have an idea and I'd want to raise my hand, but I'd think, I don't know, I'm kind of nervous to do it. And then someone else would share that exact same idea and they'd get kudos for it. And I'd think, you dummy. I also want to say I've shared some ideas that have gone really badly. And when I think about some of the ways I did that, I will give you this tip. If you're in a corporate environment or you know, you're having a team meeting, you do have to suss out the environment. Is the environment, the system going to want to hear the idea that you have? So for instance, one of the ideas that went the worst for me is I was, I ran market research for a book club company, a very well known book club company, and I did that for eight years and it informed product development, informed marketing, I was a marketing person as well. And over and over in focus groups, you know, I ran those and quantitative surveys. Members, I don't know if you know how book clubs used to run, but you'd sign up, the member would sign up for a particular, you know, fee, and you would get a book every month. Book of the month club. You know, it would arrive and people wouldn't want the book, but they wouldn't return the book. And that's where we made all the money. It's called negative option. I hated that. I hated it. I felt like, this is not how I want to make money. But there I was. Negative option book club. But focus group after focus group of members said, I hate this. You're basically charging me because I'm lazy. In other words, I'm not getting a refund. I'm not getting another book that month because I'm too lazy to put that book in the mail and return it. So we had been acquired by another company, very large book club company and publishing company. And interestingly, the president of that company, who I grew to know well, he hated research. So there I am, after eight years of doing research there and him saying, I don't really value this at all. I think we should just test stuff. So automatically I was feeling uncomfortable in my role. But I wrote an email. I thought it was a great idea. I wrote an email to the cfo. I mean, it was a small company. I knew all these people extremely well and worked with them and collaborated with them. But the cfo, the CEO, and a few other key people, head of marketing. And I said, basically, I have heard over a hundred focus groups and surveys saying negative option is the thing we hate most. And I suggested, could we do a financial review of if we were to change that model, what would be the financial impact and what would be the gain? I thought it was a great idea. Oh, boy. The entire. The president was furious. And it was, as one of my colleagues said, that was a nail in your coffin. I'm like, wow, I didn't even know I had a coffin. But the point is, I think it was a great idea. And frankly, negative option doesn't work anymore. People are way too savvy. You know, consumers today don't stuff this stuff down my throat. And it did kind of implode. That whole company imploded 10 years after. So I was ahead of my time, but it went terribly. So my tip for you is, not every idea, even if it's a good one, even if it's ahead of its time, is going to be received well. So you have to understand what I should have done is vetted it a little less public. All right, so back to that's a cautionary tale. But back to do I hold back in meetings? If you know, look, this is an idea, an opinion that's well vetted, I'm going to share it. If you hold yourself back from that, you're going to hold yourself back from success, from growth, from people respecting you, from people recognizing your talent and brilliance. Okay, so I want to give you a strategic tip here, an action step. If you find this is one of your problems, I would ask you, starting this week, on your next zoom call, on your next phone call, in person interview, speak up more. Find a place, find a time, a meeting, a project where you can share your idea bravely start doing it. That's the only way. Now again, vet the idea. Think about it beforehand. Don't maybe just blurt it out, but start sharing your ideas. Okay, all right. Number two way that your lack of confidence is holding you back. You agonize over whether you are succeeding in your leadership performance, presentations and projects. I see this, you know, so I've worked with thousands of professionals across six continents. I see. I do want to say this too. You know, I've written a book, the Most Powerful Youl, about the seven most damaging power gaps that 98% of professional women face and 90% of men. And I can tell you when you have these gaps, you're not going to succeed at the level you want or to the degree you want or make the impact you want. And if you have three or more, as 75% of the women I've interviewed, your success is severely limited. So interestingly, confidence is a thread through all of these power gaps. So definitely check out my book the Most Powerful. You check out the training mostpowerful you.com video training. You can take it right away. It's self paced and you get right into the portal and you and you can watch the 16 videos and read the curriculum and learn, learn, learn. But in this case, agonizing over whether you are successful or succeeding in other people's eyes. I hear this so much and I hear it many different ways, not only from new managers, I have a few right now clients who are new managers and they've never managed managers before. And you know, it's an insecure feeling because they're not sure they have the ability or even know what to prioritize. But I've heard this problem even with mid to high level people. I'VE worked with very high level people. I've worked with people with millions of dollars and who impact millions of dollars of client development, business development, products. So if you feel deeply insecure about your performance. So for instance, ask yourself, do I obsess about how I did in my presentation and I can't get out of my mind? Or let's say it all went well, but you said one thing that maybe didn't land well. You just obsess about it and rolls over and over and over and over. And when that happens, it's serving to keep you feeling insecure. You're obsessing about it and you're exacerbating the impact of it. So ask yourself, do you go over and over in your head the small details that you felt you didn't handle well enough? So what I'd ask you to do is right now, get some outside help if you can't stop obsessing. You know, this, this didn't happen overnight. Ask yourself, how old is this issue? Right? How long have I been like this? Sometimes we were like this as little children. Sometimes it comes on as a symptom after something really humiliating happened and we're scared to death. Like, you know that thing with me where my colleague said, yep, that was the nail in your coffin, you know, that messed with my mind for a long time. You know, I really lost confidence, even though for many years I was very successful in that role. So sometimes it's trauma that makes you obsess. Oh, did I get it right? Do they like me? But either way, if it's something traumatic that happened a year ago or it's the way you have been, and typically, you know, I know some, I've worked with some pessimistic people and pessimism and optimism are traits that you can research those, they start to be evident very early on, even as early as age 4 and 5. If you've been a pessimistic person, and that's not the same as what I'm talking about, but if you tend to really obsess that you didn't handle things well enough, often that's deep insecurity. And that started when you were young. I would say get some outside help that can be a great therapist. I happen to love marriage and family therapist. Even though, let's say you have a business challenge, a business problem, or a professional problem. Marriage and family therapists, again, look at the system. How are you raised? What's going on in your company, what's going on in your relationships? And it's so effective, I would look to perhaps seek marriage and family therapy help and you can find a great therapist@aamft.org American association of MarriageandFamilyTherapy.org I believe, but it's aamft.org you can also work with a coach. Now most coaches aren't trained therapeutically and you're not going to do therapy in coaching, most likely. But some coaches really have great training on how to help you look at your thought processes, your mindset, your habit of obsessive thinking and when does it get exacerbated and when do you feel you don't have it so much? Greater awareness equals greater choice and it's really important that you get to the bottom of that. All right, number three way that your confidence is obvious to others and it's hurting you is that you're hyper critical of others. So let me share about this. In my time as a therapist, I saw that how we view and talk about other people is 100% a direct reflection of the way you feel about yourself. Another way to look at this is kind, loving and generous. People are usually the same way to themselves. They're accepting, they're forgiving of themselves. Those feelings inevitably that you have of yourself inevitably flow over into the interactions of others and the perceptions you have of others. On the other hand, if you're relentlessly hard on yourself, it's going to be pretty impossible for you not to feel that way about other people. So ask yourself, am I very critical of others and do I easily find fault in people or find them lacking? Am I angry at people a lot and feel they don't live up to my expectations? You know, this was so me when I was younger. I'd be like, I'm so nice. Why are people so mean? Why are people so cruel? Well, I was attracting that. You know, if everybody around you is cruel and disrespecting, you've got to look. You're the common denominator. You know, what consistently repeats is not random. And I've said this before you we co create, we co sustain and we attract behavior. And you know, now after I've done all this work all these many years, I do not feel like that at all. The people in my sphere, kind and generous and loving and so helpful and spiritual. And I think a good part of that is, you know, I've healed being so terribly hard on myself. So are you also. Here's another way to tell There's a type of behavior I've called or termed perfectionistic over Functioning. And every time I say this to a client, are you a perfectionistic over functioner? They laugh. They know exactly what it is and the answer is yes. So many high achieving people in fact are perfectionistic over functioners. We'll link to an article below that helps you define it and recognize it. But basically it's doing more than is healthy, appropriate and necessary. But on top of that, you're trying to get an A plus in all of it. It's not possible. And why do we need to get an A plus in everything? I mean I learned that as a parent, not everything that you're doing as a parent needs to be an A. I mean, let me give you an example, one I've written about. When my kids are little, you know, there were boy when you could do this. Now because of so many food allergies, we can't often bring in food for parties, birthday parties. But when my daughter was little, I wanted to, you know, make cupcakes by scratch and decorate them together. And that week of her birthday I was traveling. It was, you know, I can't swear here. Maybe I can. It was an S show, if you will. It was a mess and I felt like the worst mother in the world. She's not going to have homemade cupcakes. I went out and bought plain cupcakes and we decorated them together and had a blast. Was it an A? Who cares? We had a blast. They were delicious and the kids in the class love them. So you get the idea. Are you constantly feeling you have to do more than is healthy, appropriate and necessary and you must get an A in all of it? Usually that starts from how we're raised. So I'd ask you to look at where that come from. And also the next time you are really critical of someone, make a little red flag come up inside of you. Remember my voice and stop yourself and say wait. Is what I've just did here that hypercritical mean assessment of that person? How old is this? Where did I learn it? What does it give me? Ah, you know, sometimes when I've behaved in a way like a toad comes out of my mouth or I'm thinking a really mean behavior, you know, I've learned. I hope this is a helpful tip. Years ago when I was my kids were little, something happened that showed me that we're all connected and if you have an extremely critical thought about someone else, it can land right back at you. And so one day my neighbor was telling me that her son was coming home with F's. C'S C's, D's and F's. And she wasn't sure what to do about it. And, you know, of course she was upset and didn't. She wanted to see him succeed. And I'm not proud of this, but I had some kind of, I don't know, judgy thought, like, maybe he's not getting the help he needs. It was a judgy thought, I'm not joking. The next day, my little son, who'd only gotten A's. I forget how old he was, maybe 8, 7, came home with a C. I'm not kidding. The next day he walks in, there's his paper with a C. To me, that was a smack across the face from the universe that, oh, okay, you're going to be like that in your mind. And it's not punishment that I perceived I was getting. It was awareness. It was compassion. It was incredible. So when you are being critical, first of all, be careful, because what goes around comes around. What you give out is. It's just kind of the law of the universe. You're going to get back, but you don't want to be that way. It doesn't make us feel well. Right. Makes us feel sick. So I hope that's helpful that you look at, when I do this to others, how am I hurting myself? I hope that's helpful. All right, two more ways that your confidence is obvious to others and hurting you and limiting your success. Number four, you're threatened by the success of others. You're jealous of it. So we all know folks who can't find it in themselves to be happy about the success of others. We can see it. You know, frankly, I learned in therapy, training, everything is communication. You can't not communicate. So your words, your mannerisms, your body language, your facial expressions, you're revealing it. If you feel jealous of someone, it shows. It shows. And even if it doesn't show, it's a sickening feeling, that green envy, when we have it for people's good fortune and success. So if you find that when your colleagues, you know, they're getting rewarded, they're getting the recognition, and it's really hard for you and you struggle. I mean, maybe you're not being respected in your organization. Maybe there's a solid reason why you should be interviewing and thinking about, I don't like this ecosystem. I'm not respected. Maybe young people aren't respected there, Maybe women aren't, maybe LGBT people aren't, maybe older people are discriminated against. You might have a solid reason for this. But if you're simply jealous because someone else has success, there's probably an underlying reason and it has to do with confidence and feeling a lack of scarcity in terms of the degree of success you feel you've experienced and the lack of it. So ask yourself, how do I feel when colleagues are praised for their achievements and have been recognized? Does it make me happy for them? Or do I feel angry or threatened or insecure about my own accomplishments? And do I think less of myself because of them? You know, what comes to mind for me? Just so you know that I've had all of these. I mean, most everything I write, I write from personal experience as well as research. But, you know, when I wrote my first book, it came out 2008. Breakdown, breakthrough. Wow. I, you know, I was obsessive about the Amazon ratings and people, you know, new authors are often doing that. They're looking every day and refreshing it ten times a day. Where's the ranking? How's it doing? How many reviews? And I would see colleagues of mine because I was a writer, you know, their book would be a bestseller before it even came out or week one, Wall Street Journal, New York Times bestseller. And I would be jealous. Let's face it. I'm being honest. I would be like, wow. And part of it was, I think my book is great. And you know, it's been research based and the work transforms people's lives. But I think also there was a lack of confidence there that I wanted to see those vanity metrics, I wanted proof that it was great. With the second book, not that I've never had a second about that. But with the most powerful you, I have a completely different relationship to other people's success vis a vis my own. And I can tell you it's a lot happier place to be. Okay, all right, where are we now? That was number four. Threatened. Yep. And did I give you the tip? Jealousy and being threatened by others, it often stems from an intractable sense that you're not enough and also that you're not taking accountability for what you want to change. Often it means you're blaming the outside world for what you don't have. So the tip, the strategy I'd ask you to take is what if you took accountability right now for everything that you have and let's even say what you don't have now, of course that's a challenge because we're born into certain situations. We through no doing of our own. There are things that happen to us. Totally get that. But I'm asking you, in terms of the success you've had, what if you took accountability for it, right? And also that you start appreciating it more and recognizing what you have versus what the other person seems to have. And you leveraged what you have more and you decided to change what isn't working more. I think that you would find that that feeling of envy will dissipate. You know, I interviewed Gretchen Rubin, the happiness author, years ago, and she said the story is that she had studied law and she had graduated from an Ivy League, and she would get the school's, you know, alumni newsletter, and she would look at what her colleagues, other graduates, were doing. And if it were law or other fields, she didn't really care. But if someone was an author, a writer, she'd be green with envy. And what she realized is, that's what I want to be, so let's do it and look how well she's done it. So I would suggest that you look at doing something when you feel jealousy of others, look at what it really means, and then do something concrete. Finally, the fifth way your confidence is is obvious to others and hurting you. You fail to recognize and articulate clearly what you are good at and the talents you have. So this one falls smack into the power gap, the seven power gap methodology. And it is power gap number one, not recognizing your special talents, abilities and gifts. 66% of the women I've surveyed are facing this gap. 66%. And the problem is, if you don't recognize what you're good at, then you can't talk about what you're good at. And if you can't talk about it and share it and put it on LinkedIn and put it in your resume and discuss it in your interviews and talk to your boss about it, you are leaving so much success, money, reward, advancement on the table. Right? But what's interesting is, I mean, there are reasons we don't recognize, number one, what comes very easily to you. Often you can't recognize that as a skill or a talent. Like, I love to be on stage talking to 500 people. I didn't realize till way into the game that, you know, singing in front of people and speaking in front of people, most people want to pass out and they can't imagine doing it makes them too afraid. Well, if it's easy for you, you don't realize what a skill it is. Right. Number two, I think that women in particular, they're so afraid of someone saying, no, you're not good at that, of someone debunking them, debunking their skills, throwing them off, saying, oh, you're not so hot at that, that they are desperate not to sound like a bragger. Boy, if this were something I could change overnight with my words, it would change the world. It's not bragging to talk about what you're good at and the outcomes that you've created that have made a difference. Right. So you have to be able to articulate those. And again, if you don't know, it's really going to hold you back and it's going to hold you back from doing work you love because you might think, and I've seen people advise this, just do what you're good at. No, I mean I have skills that I hate using. No, it's not just what you're good at. It's also what comes easy to you and what you enjoy. That's what you want to build a career out of. Okay, so it is really, really time to get clear, close this power gap, number one, get clear on what you're great at and start leveraging that. Okay, so let me give you one quick tip on that. I have a TEDX talk time to brave up and it talks about this was before I named the power gaps. I think it was 2016. Now I have a whole framework around it and the whole book chapter on it. Chapter number one in the most powerful you. But I'd ask you to watch that TEDx talk and what it shares is the idea of sitting down this weekend with a patent paper and writing out the 20 facts of you irrefutable accomplishments and achievements and things you've done that you're most proud of. I don't care if it came from age 8 to 10 to 12 to 21. What are the things you're most proud of that you have done? They're irrefutable. They're facts. So for instance, I had an 18 year old high level corporate career. Nobody can take that from me. I did that vice president. Then I got a master's in marriage and family therapy and became a therapist for five years. That's just a fact. And then you want to talk about, well, how has that shaped you? How has that changed you? And who cares, right? Number three for me is I've studied women's challenges for 16 years and researched it in 52 different ways. Not a lot of people can say they've done it in the same way with the same lens. Right? And for me, the fourth would be I have a business, I'm in the business world. And boy, does that stretch you. So I'm not advising people about business issues when I don't have any idea about business. Those are facts. I want you to come up with 20 facts and then start leveraging them. All right, that's it. Now, I want to leave you with this because I think it's brilliant. I interviewed Dr. Nate Zinsser on this podcast and we're going to link to it below. He is a top, top performance expert and he's the director of the Performance Psychology program at the U.S. military Academy at West Point. Plus, he's worked with top professionals and athletes all around confidence. And this is what he says. Real confidence is a quiet sense of certainty about oneself and one's abilities. A sense of certainty that allows you to simply do what you are capable of doing without thinking about how you do it. And then he says, expecting confidence to arrive is exactly what most people do and exactly why most people are disappointed. He says, I'm routinely amused and amazed by the number of people who admit that confidence is very important to their personal and professional success, but then they admit that they do nothing to build it up or ensure sure that they have it when they need it. And he finally says in our interview, what they need to do is work on their confidence in the same way they work on all the other important attributes, putting time and energy into building confidence, just as they put time and energy into building their physical fitness or their professional skill sets. He ends this by saying, fortunately, the time and energy effort needed to develop confidence is rather small, but pays huge dividends. So check out that interview with him. It's so inspiring. And I hope this moves you forward. You know, if I could jump in there in your minds, in your hearts, in your souls, and help you see what I see about the amazingness of you, I don't think you'd struggle so much with confidence. You just don't see it. So ask other people what they see in you. Ask your friends. Ask your family. Ask the people at work who love you. What do you see in me as my top skills and talents? You know what, or let's say a friend, you know, what do you see in me that makes you enjoy a friendship with me? Ask. And then you've got to let it in. For a lot of people, if they get a compliment, they deflect it because they feel too unworthy of it. So the takeaway here is, please feel worthy of knowing that you are important and valuable and the world needs your talents and you have great talents finally download my Career Path Assessment Self Assessment. We'll link to it. Take it. It's 11 pages of questions I wish someone had asked me 40 years ago. And if I had answered these questions honestly, I don't think I would have made a lot of the mistakes I made. I would have believed in myself. I would have believed in my talents. Take it and see what you learn from it. If you feel you don't haven't learned anything, you might want a session with me. Then I'd be happy to work on a Career Breakthrough six session program with you. That's my favorite program that creates real breakthrough and we'll link to that below. All right everybody, I'd love to hear what you think. I'd love to know if this is a confidence booster for you and please take the steps I'm suggesting and let me know how it goes. All right everyone, thank you so much and have a wonderful week and we'll see you next time. Bye bye. Hello, Kathy here, and thanks so much for tuning into today's episode. One quick thing I'd love to share before you go is about my new digital training program for organizations and professionals called the Most Powerful you, which is the companion to my book the most powerful you7 bravery boost boosting paths to Career Bliss I'm so thrilled that recently an international division of the United nations brought in the Most Powerful you program as a training tool for members of their staff, and I'm speaking with other global organizations right now to do the same. This program brings to organizations real world transformative training for leaders, teams and professionals to help them thrive at the highest level in their work and projects. So here's my Please take a look at what I'm training in the most powerful you, and you can find that@mostpowerful you.com and if you feel the content would be instrumental for you and your team, I hope you'll ask your leaders and DEI managers to bring in this training program to your company. It's truly transformational for work cultures everywhere and it generates amazing results. Thanks so much. And here's to you becoming the Most Powerful you. Thanks so much for joining us today. And please don't forget to check out finding brave.org for more programs, resources and tips. And tune in next time for your weekly dose of Finding Brave.